Thinking of building myself a retro DOS/Win95/98 PC

[turrican9]

So I want to build a retro gaming PC to play games from about 1990 to 1998/1999.

I was looking at a Pentium II 233 and a ASUS 440LX motherboard with 128MB RAM and maybe a voodoo Banshee graphics card. I think this should handle games from late 90s and at the same time not be too fast for those earlier games. Except from a few very old games of course. I could turn off L1/L2 cache to try and remedy this.

Any opinions on this?

[jarp]

Great idea.

I've been thinking the same but I personally would target Pentium 90 MHz or so just because I had one as a kid. Everything else is recycled years ago but I THINK I kept my Gravis Ultrasound. Have to take a look of my fathers place, it should be there...

[Amiga1992]

Follow d0pefish's post on VOGON to get some ideas on how to make yours. I also plan to build myself an old Pentium gaming machine! Personally I'd go for a Pentium I or Pentium I with MMX, tops.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=51502

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by Akira

Follow d0pefish's post on VOGON to get some ideas on how to make yours. I also plan to build myself an old Pentium gaming machine! Personally I'd go for a Pentium I or Pentium I with MMX, tops.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=51502

I actually got a Hewlett Packard Pentium 133 PC for free here the other day. Ordered PS2 Keyboard and mouse from ebay as the previous owner had thrown them away. It also had a soundblaster 32 and a x8 CD rom drive installed. Should be a nice retro PC. However, PII 233 I was wanting to build would be better suited for later 90s games. But we'll see. I also have a couple of IDE to compact flash adapters on the way.

[amiga_Forever]

That's assuming u can even find a Pentium II box now-days.. Check Vintage.

I always liked playing DOS games, but now-a-days u really gotta use DosBox emulation as it's far either, unless u happen to be very lucky to get your hands on such an old system. eBay or hand me down..

It doesn't need to be on the same machine... Just have a spare "up to date" system set up, just to run DOSBox only.. You may find later u'll start using it for other stuff. Just make sure its never connected to the internet.

[ptyerman]

I have a box full of Slot 1 Pentium I, II and III CPU's, literally dozens of them! Quite a few of the 233 MMX type and everything up to P III 600. Also have quite a few Socket 7 Pentiums, AMD K62's, Cyrix 586, PGA370 Celerons and Pentiums etc. Even have a Intel 486 somewhere and probably other stuff I forgot.
I intend on sorting through them all one day and putting them on ebay or Amibay, but in the meantime if anyone wants a CPU, PM me.

[hooverphonique]

there is a user on YT called philscomputerlab who as a lot videos on the subject. maybe that could be of use to you?

[rare_j]

Originally Posted by turrican9

I actually got a Hewlett Packard Pentium 133 PC for free here the other day. Ordered PS2 Keyboard and mouse from ebay as the previous owner had thrown them away. It also had a soundblaster 32 and a x8 CD rom drive installed. Should be a nice retro PC. However, PII 233 I was wanting to build would be better suited for later 90s games. But we'll see. I also have a couple of IDE to compact flash adapters on the way.

Did you get a 3dfx card? I would suggest a regular 3dfx voodoo graphics card over a banshee if you have a spare pci slot, they seem to be a lot more compatible with the early stuff than the banshee or the voodoo2.
If you do get a PII box as well, then a voodoo2 would be better match than a banshee, the 2 was a lot faster for later games.
My retro PC is a PIII Celeron 900 which is not ideal beacause some games like tomb raider glitch out at the high spec. But it does have a voodoo1 which makes it more compatible with a lot of early stuff that flat out refuses to work with either of the voodoo2 cards I tried.